Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1887-02-24
FROM The SOUTH,
The Speculation Craze Seen through
Cool Dak Ota specs.

Cool DaB Ota specs.
On the Road, Feb. diff per.
mitted by the iolting of this fast t.ai,
from Chattanooga to Atlanta. / viii
amuse myself, if not my friends, by
writing some notes of the last tire,
days. / reached the former city lat,
at night finding every hotel bed pre-
empted and mostly occupied by the
horde of hungry investors and Spectator;
from the north. Of course you have
heard of this tremendous boom in city
property. 1t has been running higher
and higher for q year, without a decline
or pause; and now it 10 blown to a height
and expansion that makes cautious
heads grow Dizzy and fearful. Having
no money l felt safe to stay while
listening to the apparently insane trans
actions, and watching this wonderful
scramble for sudden wealth, as q great
MOI al curiosity of human life.
This fact is, Chattanooga has become
a great town,-great in population,
manufactures. railroadscommerce, com.
fort, health, fruit, mineral resources,
climate and wealth. But she now has
something greater than all these
namely expectations of being the Cincin-
natl or Philadelphia of the whole south.
Her real estate men boldly advance this
idea, and by spending their thousands
here, they bet their pile on the result.
And strange to say, the monied men of
the country are hoeking here and betting
their millions on the same side. Over
seventy-five real estate agents advertise
heavily in the mornings sixteen page
Daily Times. All acre property within
ten miles is the subject OF wild specula.
ton land avery civil engineer is swamped
with work, laying nj new additions and
suburbs. 1t is common thing to be
shown q lot or tract, no better than q
thousand Others in town, which has been
sold six or eight times in q few months
or weeks, at such successive jumps as
these: $24Oo, 5000, 5000, 5000, 1900
1900. Most dealers are angry at
having sold too cheap last fall, and say
that although they made twenty thous-
and or SO by selling, yet they lost a good
deal more than that by not holding on
till now.
Some think this may go on q year or
two longer. bat others expect o crash.
My old friend of wal times who lives
here, is one of the solid leading men of
the city. He partially or wholly owns
and manages a great Touring mill, a car
factory, an iron mine and furnace at
another place, a Bessemer steel furnace
here, and other enterprises. He is one
OF five who secured 15G acres on top of
Lookout mountain some time ago, for
about $1,000, and are now realizing $4,000
and upward for each acre they sell. He
has projected and nearly competed an
inclined railroad up the face of the
mountain to the foot of palisade cliff at
the top. There o dummy track begins,
runs along the face of the cliff on higher
and higher trestles, and at last sur
mounts the top and rum the whole
length OF the mountain, 1000 feet above
the Tennessee river below. Their in
clined road has a double track, every tie
bedded in broken rock, unless spanning
chasms, with q wire cable running over
pulleys. Yes serday 1 saw the engine at
the bottom pull the construction car up
the track, which is 1920 feet long, with
a vertical rise of 1,3G0 feet. The slope is
80 deg. part of the way. It cost about
100000 and will be ready for business
in a month or 80.
This friends says he expects this great
ora OF town-lot speculation, (Which RACES
also in Birmingham, Ala, ever higher
than here, and more or less Affects all
other parts Of the country except Yank-
ton,) is but the prelude to a great COM
mercisl crash: and that all prudent men
will do we'll to keep their feet under
them, we'll planted on something solid /.
But to show how his theory and practice
agree, and that he means to hold his
dish so as to catch this golden shower
while it lasts, I may mention that last
night he met with his monied friends,
who, to the number of about twenty,
are organizing company with SIC, 0OO,-
600 stock to buy up ell the wild and in
accessible lands just over the river, make
then accessible by good bridges, and GO
on selling rocky building sites and giori-
Gus prospects at from one to five thous-
and each as many are o doing.
On my first day here l walked out
past the great Methodist university,
built by friends of the freedmen, where
freedmen are excluded from education
past Fort Wood, in excellent preserva-
ton; past Orchard Knob, q rocky hill
dotted with pines from which Grant
watched and directed the terrible
stormipg lcf Mission ridge. which Lies
one or two miles farther out across the
broad valley. The ridge has o slightly
undulating crest five to eight miles long,
very marrow at the top and very steep or
the side toward the city. / estimate it to
be over 500 feet high on its front face
well timbered. dotted with a few fine
houses on the crest which 10 reached by
expensive, well graded roads. Two
s%plendidly graded and maoadamized
avenues stretch three miles straight to
4 tina a;tv The rocky harran updnIatino